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Last weekend, the Mowat Centre for Policy Innovation at the University of Toronto began releasing glimpses into a new study it has completed on how badly Ontario is being jobbed by Confederation. Ontarians send about $11 billion more to Ottawa each year than that province gets back in federal spending and transfers. This discrepancy the Mowat Centre refers to as the “fiscal gap.”

I’ve got news for you, Ontario, when it comes to being jobbed by Confederation, you’ve got nothing on Alberta. Last year Mowat calculated that Albertans sent a similar amount more to Ottawa than the province received in return — and Alberta has one-quarter of Ontario’s population.

But the issue here is the folly of Canada’s vast system of interprovincial wealth transfers called equalization. When even Ontario begins whining that it deserves billions more in equalization, you know the system has become so dysfunctional that the best action would just be to dismantle the whole scheme.

Yes, Ontario has recently fallen on semi-hard times. It has unemployment higher than the national average and less economic growth. Its costs to provide public services are higher than the Canadian average while its ability to raise tax revenues is lower.

But much of Ontario’s malaise is of its own making — or at least the making of the Liberal government of Dalton McGuinty (and now Kathleen Wynne) that has run that province since 2003 and has run it into the ground.

Take for instance the contention popular among New Democrats, environmentalists and lefty economists that the rise of Canada’s energy sector has cost central Canada (Ontario included) hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs by driving up the value of the Canadian dollar and making Canada’s manufactured goods more expensive to international buyers — the so-called Dutch disease.

It’s far more likely that the McGuinty government’s breakneck push for green energy is behind the manufacturing job losses. Since 2009, $18 billion has been spent on solar, wind and biofuel alternatives in Ontario, without producing any new net energy. Still, the scheme has pushed up the price of electricity by 40% or more. And since electricity is one of the largest input costs in manufacturing, this has likely had much more impact on job losses than the oil and gas boom in Western Canada.

So if Ontario is responsible for its own slide into have-not status, why should taxpayers elsewhere be squeezed to pay for the provincial Liberals’ mismanagement?

Of course, since equalization began in 1957, Quebec has been subsidized every year for its mismanagement. Of the more than $550 billion paid out in the past 56 years, half has gone to Quebec despite the fact that province subsidies social services at a rate far high than any other province and despite the fact it has resources it refuses to develop — resources that could annually bring it $2 billion to $3 billion in added revenue.

Begun in 1957 as a way to give have-not provinces a little extra money so they could provide public services roughly equal to those provided by have provinces, equalization has become so badly distorted — intellectually corrupt, even — that it should be reduced to the smallest amount possible.

It can’t be dismantled entirely. Equalization is mandated by the Constitution. However, the Constitution does not dictate how much equalization should be paid out each year. So as close to zero as possible would be best.

I am not singling out the newest panhandler on the block — Ontario. Rather, I am arguing that if even Ontario has begun to demand vast new sums from Ottawa, then equalization has become so meaningless that the program should be axed.

Gunter: Scrap equalization

Last weekend, the Mowat Centre for Policy Innovation at the University of Toronto began releasing glimpses into a new study it has completed on how badly Ontario is being jobbed by Confederation. Ontarians send about $11 billion more to Ottawa each year than that province gets back in federal spending and transfers. This discrepancy the Mowat Centre refers to as the “fiscal gap.”

I’ve got news for you, Ontario, when it comes to being jobbed by Confederation, you’ve got nothing on Alberta. Last year Mowat calculated that Albertans sent a similar amount more to Ottawa than the province received in return — and Alberta has one-quarter of Ontario’s population.

But the issue here is the folly of Canada’s vast system of interprovincial wealth transfers called equalization. When even Ontario begins whining that it deserves billions more in equalization, you know the system has become so dysfunctional that the best action would just be to dismantle the whole scheme.

Albert Foulston was arrested at an Edmonton home Tuesday on a dark, wintery night. Police allege Foulston and two other suspects had earlier been involved in an assault and robbery at a modest motel nearby.